HEAGE (or HIGH EDGE) is a large township, with a scattered
population, and in 1844 was formed into a parish from the civil parish
of Duffield and made a rectory 1867 : it is on the Chesterfield road,
2 miles north-east from Belper, 1½ east from Ambergate station
and 143½ from London, in the Mid division of the county, Appletree
hundred, Belper union and petty sessional division, Belper and Ilkeston
county court district, rural deanery of Duffield, archdeaconry of
Derby and diocese of Southwell. Since 1863 the township has been under
the management of a local board of six members. The river Amber flows
along the northern boundary of the parish and joins the Derwent at
Ambergate. The Cromford canal also passes through. The church of St.
Luke, formerly a chapel of ease to Duffield, consists of chancel,
transeptal nave, south porch and a turret on the north side, containing
one bell, and was enlarged and repaired in 1836 : in the chancel are
two stained windows, erected in 1881 by F. N. Smith esq. to his father
and his wife: there are 450 sittings, 250 being free : half an acre
of land was added to the churchyard in 1881. The register dates from
the year 1819 for baptisms and 1847 for marriages and burials. The
living is a rectory, average tithe rent-charge £52, net yearly
value £178, including 4 acres of glebe, with residence, in the
gift of the vicar of Duffield, and held since 1888 by the Rev. George
Arthur Tindall B.A. of Corpus Christi college, Cambridge. A Mission
church is now (1890) being erected at Ambergate. There are Wesleyan,
Primitive and Reform Methodist and the Free Methodist chapels here.
A charity of £7 5s. yearly, left in 1817 by the Rev. F. Gisborne,
some time vicar of Staveley, is distributed in cloth and flannel to
the poor. Holland's charity of £6, left in 1744, is divided
between the rector (who receives £4) and the poor who attend
Heage church, the remaining £2 being expended in bread. Lieut.-Col.
Albert Frederic Hurt, of Alderwasley Hall, is lord of the manor and
Lord Belper and co-proprietors, Herbert Strutt esq. and F. N. Smith
esq. are the principal landowners. The soil is clayey. The chief crops
are corn and grass. The area in acres is 2,278; rateable value, £7,419
; the population in 1881 was 2,405.

CACKLETON, a quarter of a mile south; TOADMORE and AMBERGATE, 1½
miles west-north-west ; BOOTHGATE, 1 mile south and NETHER HEAGE,
half a mile west, are hamlets.

AMBERGATE is the junction station on the Midland railway
for Derby and the Matlock, Buxton, Manchester and Liverpool and Mansfield,
Worksop and Retford lines.

Endowed, for 28 boys; the school will hold 120 ; average attendance,
64 ; endowed in 1705 by George Storer with a farm, now producing an
average yearly rent of £40, £28 of which is paid to the
master for teaching as many children free; the surplus, after paying
farm expenses, is applied to the apprenticing of a boy from the village;
John Herbert Barnes, master